April 13, 2008

A new book and house restoration recapture the glory of Chicago's mansions

A splendid survivor amid the hulking high-rises of River North, the house that booze built holds down the corner of Erie and Wabash with regal self-assurance. The original owner, a New England emigre named Samuel Nickerson, made his fortune in banking and the liquor business, back in the day when Chicagoans consumed alcohol in (pardon the metaphor) biblical proportions.

In 1883, Nickerson moved into the three-story mansion, which was restrained on the outside in the manner of an Italian palazzo and fabulously, but not tastelessly, opulent within. The stair hall alone contains a multitude of multicolored stone — marble, onyx and alabster — from four countries.

Come mid- or late June, you'll be able to explore the inside of this extraordinary house. After a meticulous, five-year, spare-no-expenses restoration, the Chicago investor and philanthropist Richard Driehaus plans to open it as a house museum, though the schedule and other details remain to be worked out. Yet even if you never set foot inside, you can experience the house vicariously.

It turns out to be one of 34 urban mansions profiled in an illuminating new book, "Great Houses of Chicago, 1871-1921," by Susan Benjamin and Stuart Cohen (Ancanthus Press). Billed as the first authoritative study of Chicago's mansions, the book sheds new light on a spectacular cache of often-ignored traditional houses that fall outside the modernist canon headed by Henry Hobson Richardson's Glessner House and Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. Yet those radically innovative houses, which also appear in the book, pop out with fresh relevance when seen against the backdrop of their traditional counterparts.

The authors — Benjamin, owner of a Chicago-area consulting firm that specializes in historic preservation; and Cohen, a practicing architect and member of the "Chicago Seven" architects who in the 1970s challenged Miesian orthodoxy — have written anything but a dry architectural history. They tell the story of ambitious men — Marshall Field, George Pullman, Potter Palmer and others — who made stupendous fortunes and expressed them by hiring top-drawer architects, from Wright to New York's McKim, Mead & White.

Leavening the tale are snippets of social history, such as the recounting of the Field family's 1886 Mikado Ball, attended by more than 500 guests who arrived in horse-drawn carriages at the Beaux-Arts mansion on Prairie Avenue and were fed by a New York caterer who brought in food, linen and silver on private railroad cars.

And yet, as Benjamin writes in her lucid introductory essay, all glory (especially the glory of great houses) is fleeting. After Prairie Avenue's wealthy fled north after the 1880s, pushed out by the dirt and noise of nearby railroad trains, the street's mansions were turned into publishing houses, print shops or rooming houses. Most, including the Field mansion, were demolished. In Chicago, it's clear, change is the only constant.

Cohen's companion essay provocatively argues that "Richardsonian Romanesque" houses, which were widespread in Chicago at the end of the 19th Century, help explain the apparent disconnect between the city's progressive skyscrapers and Prairie Style houses, on the one hand, and its tradition-inspired houses, on the other. The Richardsonian Romanesque style, which was named for Henry Hobson Richardson and stressed structural expression, simplicity of forms, and the arrangement of interiors according to function, indeed can be viewed as "modern," despite its medieval precedents. But Cohen's point doesn't apply to later houses that hewed closely to tradition rather than transforming it.

The heart of the book consists of in-depth profiles of the 34 houses, which are portrayed with drawings, restored archival photographs, floor plans and text. The profiles are sharply drawn and richly detailed. Together, they reveal broad stylistic shifts, from the dark, cluttered, European-influenced houses of the 1870s, to the bright, open Prairie Style houses at the turn of the century, to the graceful, tradition-minded eclecticism of the Teens and '20s as rendered by such talents as Howard Van Doren Shaw.

If there is a weakness, it is a minor one: The photos are all in black and white, which looks very crisp and architectural, while the houses existed (or still exist) in living color, especially the richly appointed Nickerson house.

As I toured recently with M. Kirby Talley Jr., the Amsterdam-based art historian and author who has overseen the restoration with great skill, we passed through striking rooms designed by the original architects, Burling & Whitehouse, such as Nickerson's soaring, pale-green art gallery. After the century turned, the house's second owner, Lucius Fisher, an avid hunter and builder of the Chicago School skyscraper that bears his name, turned the art gallery into a glass-domed game room with stuffed animal heads lining the walls.

"The miracle is, this is still here," Talley said of the house, noting how real estate pressure has forced the demolition of so many mansions on the Near North Side and beyond. One appreciates his point — and the beauty of the Nickerson House even more — after reading "Great Houses of Chicago." The book and the restored house are both exemplars of urban recovery and rediscovery.

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The book is even more enjoyable as brought to life by its witty and knowledgeable authors, Susan Benjamin and Stuart Cohen. Come this Thursday evening (April 17, 2008) to a fireside lecture and book signing at the landmark Kenilworth Assembly Hall, 410 Kenilworth Avenue, Kenilworth, Illinois. The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. and is preceded by a dessert bar at 7:00 p.m. Admission is $10 in advance or $15 at the door. Call 847-251-2565 for information. Proceeds benefit the Kenilworth Historical Society.

One of the houses featured in the book is H. H. Richardson's masterpiece of residential design - the Glessner house in Chicago's South Loop neighborhood. The Glessner House Museum, 1800 S. Prairie Avenue, will host Susan Benjamin and Stuart Cohen for a PowerPoint presentation and book signing on Wednesday April 23 at 7:00pm. Admission is $15.00 per person and all proceeds directly benefit the museum. Please call 312.326.1480 for further information or to make reservations.